Complainants abandoned their employment by

failing to report for work or having gone AWOL

Abandonment is the deliberate and unjustified refusal of an employee to

resume his employment. To constitute abandonment of work, two elements
must concur: (1) the employee must have failed to report for work or must
have been absent without valid or justifiable reason; and (2) there must have
been a clear intention on the part of the employee to sever the employer-
employee relationship manifested by some overt act.

Abandonment is a matter of intention and cannot lightly be inferred or legally presumed

from certain equivocal acts.30 For abandonment to be appreciated, there must be a "clear,
willful, deliberate, and unjustified refusal of the employee to resume employment." 31

Further, the employee’s deliberate and unjustified refusal to resume his

employment without any intention of returning should be established and
proven by the employer.[32]

It is a settled rule that failure to report for work after a notice to return to
work has been served does not necessarily constitute abandonment. As 19

defined under established jurisprudence, abandonment is the deliberate

and unjustified refusal of an employee to resume his employment. It is a 20

form of neglect of duty, hence, a just cause for termination of

employment by the employer. For a valid finding of abandonment, these
21

two factors should be present: (1) the failure to report for work or
absence without valid or justifiable reason; and (2) a clear intention to
sever employer-employee relationship, with the second as the more
determinative factor which is manifested by overt acts from which it may
be deduced that the employee has no more intention to work

There must be a concurrence of the intention to abandon and some overt

acts from which an employee may be deduced as having no more
intention to work.

30 Camua, Jr., v, NLRC, 541 Phil. 650, 657 (2007).

31 La Rosa v. Ambassador Hotel, G.R. No. 177059, 13 March 2009, 581 SCRA 340, 347